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THORNTON: Another sneak peek. ?

11/30/2019

After dinner, Thornton insisted on doing the dishes and had to remind Blake for the nth time that it was all part of their bargain, ever since she practically begged to take over cooking.
"But are you really sure?" Blake asked worriedly. "Because if you're already tired or anything, I could totally---"
"Blake."
Oops. It was his John Wick voice, and since he only ever used it as a polite way of shutting her up, Blake reluctantly took a step back and said with a sigh, "You're the boss."
He was indeed, Thornton thought in self-mocking irony ten minutes later, having seen Blake tiptoe out of her room in a fluffy little robe that barely hid anything. He was her boss, which meant he had absolutely no fucking business sporting a hard-on the moment he caught a glimpse of the tantalizing V of her cleavage and the shapely curves of her naked legs.
He really should have her unit extended, give Blake her own en-suite. The sooner, the better, too, Thornton thought grimly. Seeing her half-naked every damn evening was just pure fucking torture for his cock, with only cold showers to look forward to and not a single hope for sexual---
Shit.
Blake had suddenly looked his way, and their gazes collided as she caught him staring hungrily at her.
SHIT.
He abruptly turned away, but hearing Blake gasp told him it was already too late.
SHIT.
She had seen his erection, and life was going to be hell from here on, now that the damn girl knew her desire for him wasn't one-sided.

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THORNTON: An Excerpt

11/28/2019

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Blake felt like pinching herself the moment she saw what could be her future workplace. Although moonlight wasn't enough to give Hartland Books justice, what she saw was more than enough to make her heart skip a beat.
There were even more marvelously beautiful sights to sigh over once she was inside the shop; the ceiling-high bookshelves, the gorgeous first-edition tomes displayed in one corner, and the reading nook in another. It was like being transported to a bookish slice of heaven, and all she could do was stare and stare and stare---
"We're closed."
The words startled Blake, and as soon as her head jerked up, her gaze automatically clashed with a pair of onyx black eyes.

Oh my gosh.

A man stood behind the counter, tall, dark, and with a lean, hard build that his denim buttoned-up shirt and jeans only served to accentuate. He had the longish, raven locks of a Regency rake, the piercing eyes of a pirate, and the cruelly sensual lips of a poet.
Growing up, she had heard, seen, or read people saying that 'love at first sight' wasn't real, and because there were so many of them, it was the one thing Blake, despite being a hopeless romantic, had never allowed herself to believe in. True love was real. Second-chance love was possible. But love at first sight?
Never.
Until---
"Miss?"
---this moment, in which her dream man come to life was staring at her like she was a couple of bricks shy of a load.
Oops.
Blake quickly moved forward, eager to rectify his less than stellar first impression on her. "Mr. Blackwood?"
Instead of answering, Dream Guy asked mildly, "Who are you?"
"I'm Blake Golding, Mr. Blackwood. Frankie told me you were looking for a shop assistant and---"
"I didn't realize you were female."
"I..." His interruption had her blinking in distraction. There was something about the way he spoke - or rather, the way he drawled each word out, like he had all the time in the world to speak. It reminded her of something, no, someone---
"Oh my gosh!"

Shock-proof.

It was how his brothers often jokingly referred to Thornton, every time they tried pranking him...and failed. Nothing ever surprises you anymore, Ethan liked to grumble. Even if someone tells you the world would end in the next minute, I'd bet you'd go about calmly sipping your coffee while you plan to survive the apocalypse.
While the joke never failed to crack his brothers up, Thornton privately felt it was a little too close to the truth. Everything was too damn predictable these days - had been so for years, and it was why he had been sold on the spot once he found out what the Hartland Initiative meant to accomplish.
With its remote location and artificially low GDP, their small town in Wyoming could only be seen by many as a place to visit but never to stay in. Moreover, with signal jammers secretly installed to keep the place free from the shackles of the Internet, Hartland also allowed Thornton and his brothers to lead ordinary, private lives and never be pestered by the assholes, gold-diggers, and sycophants that were steadily gobbling up the cities.
There were still times, of course, when annoying tourists would find their way to his bookstore, but since they rarely stayed long, Thornton was able to tolerate their presence. It was only when he received Oliver's letter about a Hollywood crew filming in Hartland for three months that he knew he had to make a few changes.
The rules of Hartland Initiative were clear: in any situation where the truth about their precious town was in danger of being exposed, members were given two choices: leave until it was safe to return...or stay in character and play their respective roles to perfection until countermeasures had been put into place.
According to the local grapevine, Slade and Farica, co-owners of the Redwood Cafe, had already flown out of Wyoming. The American tycoon had taken with him his part-time waitress girlfriend Kady for a honeymoon (never mind if they weren't married) while the Dutch heiress had simply left a few days earlier for a scheduled business trip.
Thornton knew he could do the same. He just didn't want to. But at the same time, he also knew he still had to play by the rules. If filming were to take place at his street, and any of the crew members or even the cast decided to enter the shop...
Just thinking about it had been enough to have Thornton call Oliver's office to take the other man's offer. He definitely needed a shop assistant to take over during those crucially intolerable times. That way, he wouldn't need to control his temper and force himself to bear the presence of fools. And since the mayor's secretary, Frankie, was supposed to be extremely reliable and resourceful, he had been hoping that the recruitment process would be quick and painless.
Instead, it had been the opposite.
All the women Frankie had him interview were terrified of him, and Thornton hadn't the patience to wait for them to realize he wasn't quite the hardened brute his gruff demeanor made him out to be. He had been close to throwing the towel on the whole thing altogether when Frankie suggested one last candidate, and one she personally vouched for to boot.
Blake Golding.
The moment he heard the name, he had instructed Frankie to offer the person an employment contract, thinking that Blake was a bloke...
But obviously, she was not.
Instead, she was this petite brunette with nerdy-looking eyeglasses and a smile that lit up her entire face. The whole time they had been talking, her smile hadn't slipped a single time, and it was this which threw him off. For the first time in years, he found himself perplexed, off-kilter even, and when she suddenly gasped---
"Oh my gosh."
A rapid rewind of their entire encounter blitzed through his mind, but for the life of him, Thornton couldn't figure out what the girl was oh-my-goshing about.
"I just realized why your voice sounds so familiar..." Eyes sparkling with merriment lifted up to his.

"Has anyone told you how much you sound like John Wick?"

Thornton just stared at her, but this didn't seem to faze her at all.
"It's like every sentence you drop comes with a serious amount of gravitas," she told him helpfully.
"Really."
The girl was already grinning even before he was done speaking. "See?" she crowed. "You just did it again!"
Thornton frowned. "Did what?"
"That! A normal person would've said it like this - did what?"
Thornton winced. Those last two words had been uttered in a somewhat shrill, questioning tone that hurt his ears.
"But when you say it, it's like did what." This time, she intoned the words in a deep, grave voice like...
Thornton frowned. No. This girl's insanity was obviously contagious. She almost had him convinced he really did sound like John Wick.
Which he did not, he thought forcefully.
"I see it in your eyes," she teased. "You see it now, don't you?"
"No," he rejected flatly. "I don't." He punctuated his words with a cold, hard stare, but instead of having her run away like most others did, she just kept grinning and talking, enumerating all the ways he resembled a certain fictional assassin.
Thornton was incredulous. And amazed. Maybe she was a little dense, maybe it was something else, but either way it didn't matter. This girl was not scared of him at all, and while it was unfortunate that she had to be female, he could work with that.
"...and don't even get me started on your beard, Mr. Blackwood. It's as if your barber---"
"Ms. Golding?"
She immediately stopped speaking and flashed him a smile. "Yes, sir?"

"You're hired."

"So that's how it happened," Blake finished ruefully. "I think he was just so tired of hearing me talk, he decided to hire me just to shut me up."
Frankie knew her friend was just joking, but she had a feeling there was a grain of truth in Blake's words. She had once admitted to Oliver that Thornton was a little too intimidating for her, and her boss had told her that the bookstore owner was far from what most people imagined him to be. What didn't help, however, was Thornton's lack of patience and interest to correct everyone's first impressions of him.
Could that be why he had ended up hiring Blake over all the other candidates? Many of them had better qualifications than her friend did, and there was also the fact that he had been expecting Blake to be a guy.
He had every reason to reject Blake, but instead the opposite had happened, and the more she thought about it, the only reason Frankie could come up for this was the fact that Blake was the only one who wasn't intimidated by the ex-SAF billionaire.
There was just something about these two. Something undefinable but tremendously palpable...that it had all the locals talking. Like Frankie, everyone couldn't help noticing the way Blake was always all smiles whenever her boss was around, and how she tended to, well, glow a little less brightly when he wasn't.
While Hartland's secret tycoons and heiresses seemed able to easily shrug off Thronton's occasionally sinister ways, Frankie and the other ordinary folks working in town couldn't find it in themselves to be just as unconcerned. Or at least that was how it used to be...until Blake, who from the very first day appeared completely immune to the frightening impact of Thornton's scowls or the menacing softness of his voice.
Blake was just so obvious about so many things, so careless with having her heart so blatantly worn on her sleeve, that everyone in town became certain of two things.
All the signs pointed to Blake's infatuation with her boss...and Thornton saw all those signs, too.

THORNTON will be out soon! Hope you guys are looking forward to reading it!

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Beast of Mine is now live!

11/20/2019

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Screams and cries of terror rose amidst the unmistakably violent noise of a well-planned ambush - the scrambling sound of people trying to escape, the heavy thud of bodies falling to the ground, the swish of metal slicing into flesh. And above it all, another sound rose---
"LET GO!"
The twins tore off towards the sound of the princess' voice, unstoppable and cold-blooded in their pursuit even as they had to fight their way past what seemed like dozens of mercenaries. Heads rolled down and lifeless bodies crumpled in the twins' wake, but despite the impressive speed in which they had disposed of their enemies, by the time they finally found the princess, an armored truck had rammed the steel gates open, and masked abductors had already managed to shove Estrella halfway inside it.
Gunfire exploded as the princess' attackers tried to hold the twins off, and the two men disappeared from view in an instant. Invisibility was their race's most precious skill, but as it also consumed huge amounts of power, time was of the essence, and both men knew they had to find a way to get the princess to safety before they completely exhausted their powers.
Almost there. Aluin focused on dodging bullets. Almost---
A powerful growl rose in the distance.
What the hell?
Another roar followed. Louder this time. Nearer. Fiercer.
Estrella heard it, too, and just like the twins, she found herself turning immobile with shock, all thoughts of struggling free forgotten.
That sound...
There was something about that sound...
Almost as if...
"WHAAAAAT THE FUUUUU---" One of her abductors let out a scream of terror as he suddenly went flying in the air, almost as if someone had flung him away like he was no heavier or better than a piece of carcass. And it happened again and again, with Estrella only managing a startled gasp as the same fate befell the rest of her attackers.
A moment later, she saw the twins shed their invisibility, and she started to call out...when she realized it wasn't just them who was in the process of materializing.
Oh my God.
In front of her, another creature was revealing itself inch by inch - a beast that stood over twelve feet tall, with thick sharp horns and fangs and claws as sharp as blades. Its fur was as thick and rich as sable, and with the beast able to hold itself upright, one would be forgiven for imagining the beast might be the Minotaur coming to life.
But it wasn't.
Her heart started to race, and her feet began moving on its own. She saw the twins tense the moment she moved, and she shook her head at them even as her gaze remained at the beast.
Reinforcements came to arrive, but they were too late, and the twins sharply signaled for the men to keep their distance.
As Estrella came to stand just a few feet away from the beast, it slowly turned its head to look at her.
Violet.
Its eyes were violet.
And she would know those eyes anywhere.
Oh God.
Estrella's body started to shake.
"H-Husband?"

Two years ago, werewolf princess Estrella Moretti received a letter from the one and only man she had ever loved. In this letter, Fae prince Lysander Allard asked for her hand in marriage...and for her to keep his kingdom safe while he sought to conquer an ancient beast.

When Lysander came back, he was no longer man nor Fae. He was something monstrously different, and yet instead of running away in fear or disgust, his young and beautiful wife only looked at him with love in her eyes.

Estrella was every man's dream come true. It was just too bad that everything was a mistake, and the letter she received...had been intended for someone else.

Start reading today.

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Estrella Moretti - Allard: A Modern-Day Penelope...But For How Long? by S.J. Wells

11/9/2019

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If I had told you that we would one day live among blood drinkers, shapeshifters, and faeries, would you have believed me?

Probably not, and honestly?
I wouldn't have believed myself either.
But that's exactly what our world has come down to, and for many of us, acclimating to this new reality wasn't as inconceivable as one would've expected.
Then again, the clues had been around us all for ages. There's a reason why Game of Thrones was such a massive hit. It's the same reason why people dug Westworld even if they only understood a fraction of it, and it's also why The Walking Dead still isn't, well, dead.
Life as we knew it had become unbearably and uninspiringly mundane, and it used to be, Hollywood was the only way to even remember what words like adventure and magic meant. Or at least it had been so...until the preters.
Preters are the most commonly used term nowadays to refer to beings who look like but are not quite humans, and though they've been "out" for over two years now, our insights about them are still vastly limited.
Just as we have different races, so do preters, who - despite being vastly smaller in number - are a lot more diverse. We've got Lyccans and the Caros, the Souris and the Fae, and - if the rumors are true - a few more that remain hidden. Regardless of one's race, however, preters in general are viewed by many of our kind as the closest thing to having gods walk among us. And who can blame them, really?
Preters are faster and stronger, their senses a dozen times sharper, and in all honesty, I've yet to see a single preter who's unequivocally unattractive. So yes, it's understandable why they have humans so enamored...to the point that men have online shrines dedicated to female preters like, say, Estrella Moretti - Allard.
Despite being one of the younger sisters of billionaire heartthrob Domenico Moretti, Estrella had managed to lead a fairly private life. This all changed, however, when the preters' existence became public knowledge.
Aside from being a Lyccan princess by blood, Estrella had also become the ruling princess of the Faes and Faeries by virtue of her marriage to Lysander Allard. According to my sources, Fae society remains one of the most archaic among preters, and a good example of this are the factors that determine the legitimacy of a persons' claim to the throne.
Following the dissolution of the High Circle, the Fae had elected Lysander to become its ruling prince. This also meant that his bride, Estrella, could rule in his stead if the situation called for it...but only up to a certain point.
A female consort may only rule the Fae for twelve lunar eclipses. Afterwards, if the princess is unable to submit unquestionable proof that her husband still lives, she is to marry another before the thirteenth - or be forced to relinquish the throne.
In Estrella's case, eleven eclipses have already come to pass since Lysander last appeared before his people, and this had both humans and preters alike see the princess as some modern-day Penelope. With Estrella's Odysseus showing no signs of returning, the entire kingdom of Faes is now up for grabs, and the only way for any man to become its ruling prince is to have Estrella wear his ring on her finger.
Self-proclaimed experts of preter politics say that Estrella's Moretti upbringing is likely to have her choose a malleable male who wouldn't make the mistake of challenging her rule. And while such news had been scathingly dismissed by the princess' reps, it caused a stir nevertheless, with men (mostly humans) lining up outside the gates of her residence in Coral Springs.
To date, no official announcement has been provided by either the Lyccan or Fae camp, and so the world continues to wait with bated breath. Will Estrella choose to give up the throne in order to remain Lysander Allard's bride - or has the taste of power become so addictive, she would not hesitate to forsake her alleged first love in order to remain queen?

OUT NOVEMBER 2019

Hope you can all read my "comeback" book in the world of paranormal romance. <3

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where i play the role of romance author, reader, and geek

THORNTON: Another sneak peek. ?

THORNTON: An Excerpt

Beast of Mine is now live!

Estrella Moretti - Allard: A Modern-Day Penelope...But For How Long? by S.J. Wells

OUT NOVEMBER 2019

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